Amazon's New World Is Just Asking For Trouble

Despite great sales numbers, "New World," the first title from Amazon's gaming operation, is having a rocky start. "New World" is already causing headaches for fans with incredibly long server queues, and many people who have purchased the title haven't even had a chance to play it due to log-in issues. Then there are the other problems many people have with Amazon based on its wider company practices. Just a few of the most recent incidents include Amazon allegedly firing activist workers campaigning for fair labor practices and allegedly violating labor laws in order to prevent a union from forming. It makes sense that players in "New World" would want to poke fun at the company that made it, drawing attention to some of its less-than-favorable practices. 

That's why everyone in "New World" wants to name their characters Jeff Bezos, much to Amazon's dismay. Even though many of the name variations are censored, Amazon is basically asking for trouble from the gaming community's creative side.

Picking on Jeff Bezos has become somewhat of a meme in recent months, especially after comedian and filmmaker Bo Burnham released a quirky, upbeat dance tune painting the billionaire as a blood-drinking aspirational figure. As noted by Nylon, news of Amazon's potential misdeeds, paired with Bezos' recent journey into space, have created the perfect environment for people to make fun of the CEO online. It's expected — or perhaps even natural — for players to want to bring Bezos into the MMO space of "New World." That being said, the task is proving difficult for players, many of whom just want to model their characters on the leader of one of the biggest companies in the world.

Kotaku reported on the phenomenon, noting that "New World" wouldn't let players name their characters after Amazon's famous CEO. This is particularly strange, because the outlet previously reported that the game would allow players to snag official-sounding account names, like in the case of one player who pretended to be an Amazon customer support rep. The "New World" code of conduct states that players should not "attempt to impersonate another individual or organization (such as an Amazon Games employee or representative)," but that hasn't stopped some users from modeling themselves off of Bezos anyway.

At least one Redditor managed to find a way around Amazon's filters and create a Bezos-like character named JeffrieBezos. They posted an image of Jeffrie to the "New World" subreddit with the caption, "Found him, boys." While many commenters made jokes about the image, others reported they'd seen several Bezos-like characters on various servers, meaning that some players are finding ways around Amazon's naming censors.

Some players thought it seemed strange that censorship remains an issue for platforms like Twitch, which can't seem to get serious enough about hate raids, while Amazon seems to have no difficulty censoring any mention of Bezos' name. After all, Amazon owns both the team behind "New World" and Twitch, and should be able to make the same tools available for both. For others, fans fixating on Bezos was a lost cause. One gamer tweeted, "There's proper hard working people that made this great, unexpectedly popular game and you're still only looking at bezos?"